Instead, Gould picked up the phone to one of the richest men in the country, James Packer.

“I asked for all the documents and took them to James for his legal and financial people to run through them and give me some advice,” Gould recalls.

“When they came back, they said the private equity firm who had taken over the debt were in their rights to call in the loan. James negotiated our way out of that position. He negotiated an 18-month settlement which gave us time to repay that money. They wanted an upfront payment, which we didn’t have, but James offered to pay that on our behalf.”

The payment was more than $10 million. Ashtray change for Packer at the time but a lifesaver for the Panthers.

Gould first met Packer in the 1990s when he left Penrith to coach the Roosters. Packer was on the Roosters board at the time under all-powerful chairman Nick Politis.

Reflecting on that phone call, Packer says he had no hesitation in helping Gould or the Panthers.

“To me, Phil always gives more than he gets,” Packer tells the Herald. “The 2012 conversation about helping Penrith was easy. Phil asked for a loan for Penrith and offered security that exceeded the loan amount and promised personally that the loan would be repaid. That was enough for me.”

Would the Panthers have folded if not for Packer’s support?

“We were in very serious trouble,” Gould says. “I don’t know what would’ve become of the club. From that negotiated position, we could sell some of the 14 clubs that we owned at that time, retire some debt, and eventually got refinanced by the bank, which was a big day.”

Gould’s eight-year tenure as general manager of football ended earlier this week.

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There are claims of a dramatic fallout with coach Ivan Cleary, and a power struggle with chairman David O’Neill because Gould wanted to bring Wayne Bennett to the club, but Gould says his job has simply been made “redundant”.

“If you go back, you will find quotes from me in the early stages saying exactly that,” Gould says. “I was asked, ‘What’s your goal?’ I would say, ‘That one day, my job becomes redundant. If I’ve done that, I’ve done my job well. Everything I’ve done in the past few years is now being done by people who are highly capable at what they do. This isn’t the first conversation I’ve had with the club along these lines.”

Nevertheless, Gould leaves a sizeable void. Few people have the same contact book as Gus. Few can pick up the phone to James Packer when they need help.

Gould’s detractors were this week easily forgetting the hard slog at Penrith when he first came on board, barely sleeping as he crisscrossed all over Sydney to meet stakeholders to save his club.

Those same detractors talked about the club failing to win a premiership in those eight years. Much reference is made to his so-called “five-year plan” to win a premiership but he says no such promise was ever made.

“Never said it,” he says bluntly. “The closest reference to it comes from the very early days when people were asking how precarious things were. I said, ‘It will take at least half a decade to turn this around’. Which was pretty accurate. We were never predicting a premiership in that time.

"In the first three years, we made the top four anyway. It was never about premierships and never did I say that. That’s just become a narrative created by the media and wherever I go, or wherever I’ve been, there are certain sections of the media that obviously take great joy in trying to either destabilise or criticise.”

Apart from financial instability, Gould also had a crisis with the NRL team’s salary cap.

In early 2012 he told the board that, by 2014, the Panthers faced the daunting possibility of having 12 players in the 25-man squad taking up to all but $600,000 of the salary cap.

Tough calls were made. Captain Luke Lewis was released to the Sharks. Michael Jennings was allowed to sign with the Roosters. They were Australian players but on huge back-ended deals that were going to cripple the club.

Ex Panther Luke Lewis was allowed to leave Penrith to pursue a premiership at the Sharks. Credit:Ryan Pierse

“They were decisions that had to be made,” Gould says. “Luke Lewis requested a release on a couple of occasions. I tried to talk him out of it several times but in the end he was at the point of his career where he wanted to play for a club that could win a premiership and we were going to struggle for a couple of years. In the end, I ceded to his wishes and allowed him to go. Other players were primarily salary cap driven.”

In that time, Gould has worked feverishly to ensure the Panthers have returned to being a team that relies mostly on its huge base of 8500 junior players, much like it did in 1991 when Gould coached the club to its maiden premiership.

“We’ve won six lower-grade titles in the past five or six years,” Gould says. “That’s the Penrith way. We’re a community club. It’s important that our football team represents the area. We’ve got back to those core values. We want to be a club of opportunity. When we first got there, we had 11 full-time staff at the football club. Now there are 56 people working in rugby league.”

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Indeed, Gould’s proudest moment came in March 2016 when a $22 million state-of-the-art academy was opened behind Panthers Leagues Club. It was so impressive then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull phoned, wanting to be part of the opening ceremony.

Dressed in his trademark Panthers polo, Gould met him out the front, shook his hand and said, "Welcome to Penrith, prime minister".

It hasn't all been rosy. He hired coach Anthony Griffin — and then sacked him. He made Matt Moylan captain — and then was happy for him to sign with Cronulla.

“I don’t look at it like that,” Gould says. “A lot of what’s happened is just rugby league life. The decisions I’ve made, whether I can look back and say I was right or wrong or would’ve done them differently, is irrelevant. Because at the time I did what I thought was right in the best interests of the club. So, I don’t see that as tough. I just see it as doing your job. We couldn’t back away from tough decisions from time to time. There’s been some disappointments, but my overall feeling of the club is one of pride of what we’ve created.

"The people we have working in the organisation make Panthers what it is. I haven’t saved Panthers. I haven’t built Panthers. Those people have. I’ve just given these people the opportunity and there are plenty of talented and passionate people out there who have done a great job.”